


the future eyes us sideways

by be_themoon



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2369405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_themoon/pseuds/be_themoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some stories are meant to be shared across time.</p><p>Beta-ed by the lovely [redacted].</p>
            </blockquote>





	the future eyes us sideways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snitchnipped](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snitchnipped/gifts).



Princess Elisabetta had heard stories ever since she was young of the great Queen Helen, of course. With such a famous great great great and so forth grandmother and with so many expectations on her as her parents’ only child (the birth had been difficult, her mother forbidden from becoming pregnant again for fear of her life), it was a wonder Helen hadn’t been the first name she spoke. Queen Helen the Merciful. (Queen Helen the Conqueror, in other tales - she had not been trained in arms but her tactical mind was the genius behind her brave husband’s victories when new neighbors had threatened the fragile peace.) 

That Queen Helen was a real person had seemed quite unlikely. Surely no one person could have accomplished all that the stories said she had, and all the while been so kind and so gracious and so beautiful? 

Elisabetta, I am afraid, quite resented her famous ancestor. Perhaps if there had been no Helen, she thought sometimes, I would not have quite so many lessons. Lessons she always did her best to escape, hiding in secret passageways, until one day she discovered one she had not taken before. It was a very old castle, with its aches and creaks and secrets as old castles tend to have, and Elisabetta had thought herself familiar with almost every crack and turn. 

Naturally she immediately took the passageway, for Elisabetta had a keen eye for an adventure and this was very likely to be one. (Though I must caution you against taking unknown turns in secret passageways in very old castles. It is not always likely to turn out well.) It was quite narrow but surprisingly tall, something that confused her until she stepped out into a small room, empty save for a desk and a few bookshelves. There was one book lying on the middle of the desk, rather thick and very old looking, the seal in the middle one that was quite familiar. 

Queen Helen had always been said to be a remarkably tall woman. 

Naturally she opened the book, and naturally she began to read, even when it became clear that it seemed to be a diary of some kind. Now normally such a breach of privacy is a terrible thing, but Elisabetta did have a point in that Queen Helen had been dead for a few hundred years, and surely she wouldn’t mind her great great great however many granddaughter reading just a little. Perhaps just enough to understand how to be more like her. After all, an entire kingdom on one fifteen year old girl’s shoulders was a rather heavy burden.

+

_Every day the memories of that other place grow dimmer. There are moments I struggle even to recall the name England, or what the house I spent all my childhood in looked like. It seems strange and yet right that I should forget so quickly and so easily somewhere I have spent all my life until these days._

_And yet there are some things that I think should not be forgotten about that life no matter how far I leave it behind. Someday the word London may mean nothing to me at all, and perhaps that is as it should be - one cannot be torn between two places - but there is no day of the time I have spent with Frank that I would wish to be forgotten._

+

It had been a hard summer and a harder winter - first hot, so much so that Helen had thought maybe the street was melting beneath her feet some days, and then all of a sudden bitterly cold in the way that seeped into your every pore and left your teeth chattering and your bones aching. 

That was when she met Frank, which was perhaps terribly fitting, for life was never going to be simple for them. At first it was nothing at all, simply a nod as they passed each other in church, the farm boy just arrived in the City and the seamstress and washer woman with her reddened hands hidden beneath gloves. Then one day there was a dance and, while he did not ask her to it, he did ask her to dance a few times. 

After that things followed a path that seemed perhaps inevitable, for her eyes sparkled when she spoke to him and he smiled as he had not since he left the farm. Soon he began to walk her to church and then home again, and then one night she left work and he was waiting for her, hat in hand. 

“It’s getting quite dark,” he said with that slow warm smile. “I thought you would be safer with someone with you.”

+

A delegation of Narnians returning from a long winter’s exile in Archenland presented the book to Queen Susan the Gentle and her siblings, along with a few precious others: remnants of what was stolen from Narnia when the Witch came and erased all she could of its history. Susan accepted them eagerly, thanking the dwarves properly in good Narnian fashion for their excellent caretaking of Narnia’s history (there was a great deal of ale and quite a noisy party), and later she retired to her chambers and opened the books, longing to satisfy her curiosity about those who had come here before them. Other humans! She had heard the stories, but nothing to say where they had arrived from. 

She read late into the night and even wasted two candles, precious though they still were in these early days. Sometimes she frowned, for was not the word London familiar to her as well? She was certain she should remember more, should be able to provide the connection between Helen’s shadowy Other-Place and the vague memories of a time Before that Susan herself could recall. 

Still, what was more important was the story. 

+

_Times were always hard, of course. We were two young people in the middle of changing times. I do not remember why they were changing, but it took a great deal of hard work and every day was a struggle. There were good days and there were bad days, but what we always knew was that we had each other._

+

They married on a warm summer day, in the end, and she had never been as happy as she was in that moment, never been that content. She and Frank, well, surely they could take on the world? She didn’t think there was anything in that moment that they couldn’t figure out so long as they were together. 

But early married life - it was hard. She hadn’t expected that in the beginning, had thought that of course it would be simple, would be easy. The way that the courtship had been.

It turned out that had been terribly naive of her, in the end. They both still had to work, had to determine how to pay for their house. Her fingers turned red with the labor and she couldn’t simply hide them under gloves any more. He worried, and she hid, and they argued about everything that caused those things. 

And then they were happy, because they still loved each other and because they talked about it, but it was still too easy to argue sometimes. But as the first year wound to a close she found that they argued less and talked more, that while he still looked at her hands with sadness he brought her creams instead of blaming himself for her needing to work. That when he still worked extra hours in hopes of lessening her burden she found it easier to simply tuck his dinner away and keep it warm for him, make sure the house was welcoming instead of trying to convince him he didn't need to. 

+

Liliandil (no title, but soon to be Queen of Narnia), discovered the book in the newly built library of the reclaimed Cair Paravel, one of the few relics of a nearly forgotten time. 

She lifted it out with reverence, wonder in her touch because how had this survived so long among everything else? Who had saved it, and how? Where had it hidden before someone returned it to its rightful home? And then she read, because she was going to be queen and this was the first queen to ever rule over Narnia. Surely if anyone could teach her the things she would need to know to rule over a people so very strange to her it would be the woman who had first seen them.

+

_I have found that it is important to keep track of the rituals of this new land. Because it is so new they are always changing, something always different._

_Frank and I are trying to adjust, but everything here is so different than it was before. We don’t remember it very well, but it is still there in the back of our heads. The new rituals are so different, the creatures and -_

_We were never royals before. Here we are supposed to be in charge. How does one do that without experience? We have no laws save those the Great Lion gave us, and that will not suffice for the small matters. The Dwarves accusing each other of stealing the mushrooms growing in the forest, or the centaurs arguing over their grazing land. That we must resolve on our own. It will take time, and patience. We have no authority save that which the Great Lion gave us either. We must tread carefully or risk losing our subjects' hearts._

+

The first night in Narnia, alone under the stars and without anything else in the universe to question them, Helen reached for his hand and found him already reaching for hers. They intertwined their fingers, turned and held each other under the dark. 

“Do you think we can do this?”

“Of course we can do this.”

“An entire country?”

“We’ve worked hard all our lives. We can do this.”

“If you are here with me - ”

“I am here. Always.”

“Then I suppose we can.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the poem "Seven Types of Shadow" by U A Fanthorpe, which can be read here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/seven-types-shadow-extract


End file.
